It’s June already, the stretch in the evening is undeniable, and everywhere in Ireland the summer festivals are already surprising, engaging and delighting us.

The Arts Council has always recognised the unique role of festivals. From a policy perspective, we see festivals as key producers and presenters of the arts, and critical for engaging large and diverse audiences. They provide opportunities for artists to develop their practice, and often showcase the arts in new and challenging ways, and in conventional as well as in non-arts spaces.

What is truly remarkable about festivals, though, is the unique nature of each one, reflecting so much about its locality and creating a real sense of belonging in a community. We know from research that 78 percent of people in Ireland believe that local arts help give each county or region is distinctive identity, that special sense of place. Festivals are the beating heart of that statistic.

So I encourage you this season to support and enjoy to the full your local festival, and as many others as you can. On social media, the Arts Council will place a special focus on festivals this summer, using the special #FindMyFestival hashtag, and everyone is welcome to join in celebrating the work right across the country with words, pictures and videos.

In other news, there are no fewer than four separate exhibitions featuring work from the Arts Council Collection running this month – details are here -- so catch them if you can.

The Arts Council is delighted to highlight the following exhibitions taking place across Ireland this June showcasing artworks on loan from the Arts Council’s outstanding Collection of almost 1,100 works of modern and contemporary Irish art.

The Arts Council's Project awards support specific project activities under each of the above artform/arts practice areas. The award guidelines for each award can be downloaded from the available funding section of the Arts Council's website from mid-June.

The Arts Council is pleased to announce the continuation of support to festivals to help develop their programming and organisational capacity through individual training and travel awards.

The award will provide outbound travel and training support for festival representatives such as programmers, festival curators and directors to enhance their festival programme development; and inbound awards that allow festival organisations to establish relationships abroad with the aim of developing their programming, marketing and/or administrative/operational capacity.

The Arts Council is pleased to announce the introduction of an Architecture Project Award to support new work in, or about, architecture. This is the latest award offered by the Arts Council to support architecture as an artform.

The deadline for applications for both the Architecture Project Award and the Engaging with Architecture Scheme is 17:30 on Thursday, 15 August 2019.

The Arts Council announces an Open Call to the artists and arts organisations of Ireland to create collaborative ground breaking projects of ambition, impact and scale that encourage discourse, provocation or response to place and identity as part of contemporary Ireland.

Open Call is a programme for artists and arts organisations to develop and shift their practice and profile work on a national scale, creating high profile arts central to people’s lives.

The Music Generation Development Officer will be appointed by MSL ETB and will be responsible for managing an extensive performance music education programme on behalf of Sligo Local Music Education Partnership.

Are you involved in an arts and health project? Would you like to showcase your work to a larger audience? artsandhealth.ie invites applications for a €4000 bursary to produce a short film, audio documentary or publication about an arts and health project.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and Music Network have announced the appointment of three Musicians-in-Residence for 2019 in a scheme jointly funded by the Arts Council and managed by Music Network. Each of the residencies will include free public performances at the dlr LexIcon Studio in Dún Laoghaire, between 16th June and 5th December 2019. Residencies for established musicians were awarded to Éamonn Cagney and Izumi Kimura, and a residency for an emerging musician was awarded to Lara Gallagher.

The Honorable Society of King’s Inns and Dublin City Council Culture Company invite applications from artists to spend six months living and working in the unique environment of King’s Inns, Dublin 1. The residency will offer one artist a chance to live and work in King's Inns for 6 month to develop their practice, around themes of art and law. There is accommodation in the Gate Lodge, a stipend and funding to create a new artwork.

The Irish Writers Centre is thrilled to announce the second round of a new award kindly sponsored by IWC Ambassador Marian Keyes specifically to encourage young writers aged 18-26 in the development of their artistic practice.

The Irish Writers Centre is delighted that its close relationship with the Norwegian Embassy in Ireland is continuing to flourish with this announcement of another Irish-Norwegian Writers’ Exchange supported by the Norwegian Embassy and Hordaland Fylkeskommune (County Council).

Connecting with a European cultural network can open doors to new opportunities, co-creation, learning, information sharing, new ideas and much more. It can lead to partnerships and projects with like-minded organisations from across Europe and enable you to apply for EU funding programmes including Creative Europe. There is a wide range of European cultural networks across many different activities and practices, from informal alliances of culture professionals to formalised membership bodies.

This pilot mobility scheme will provide support for 350-500 short-term (15-85 days), international mobilities of artists active in the fields of the performing or visual arts and residing in a Creative Europe country. The destination of the mobility must be a Creative Europe country. These mobilities must have a specific and well-defined objective, such as to develop an international collaboration, to engage in a production-oriented residency or in professional development, to present work in another country or to develop projects with local communities in the destination country.

The European Union Prize for Literature is an annual initiative to recognise the best emerging authors in Europe. Launched by the European Commission in 2009, the prize is open to countries participating in the Creative Europe programme for the cultural and creative sectors. Each year, national juries in a third of the participating countries nominate their winning authors, making it possible for all countries and language areas to be represented over a three-year cycle. Ireland is one of the countries in 2019.